BALTIMORE — The Jaguars got a reality check Thursday night in a 48-17 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

After scoring a touchdown on the first drives of the first two preseason games and then winning the games with their backups, the Jaguars appeared overmatched against a Baltimore Ravens team that came within a dropped pass of making the Super Bowl last year.

While the offense sputtered against a Ravens defense that ranked third in the league last year, it was even more alarming that Joe Flacco shredded their defense before leaving after one series of the third period with a 20-3 lead.

The backups added three touchdowns and the 48-point outburst was a preseason record for the Ravens.

About the consolation for coach Mike Mularkey was a 12-play, 73-yard drive at the end of the second quarter, even though the Jaguars had to settle for a field goal.

“Gave us a bit of confidence that we can move the ball,’’ Mullarkey said of the drive. “The one thing we did early is we kept putting ourselves in long-yardage situations, negative plays on first down whether they were losses or penalties. It’s hard to overcome against a good football team. We struggled with it, but it was nice to see they did that [at end of half].”

As for the defensive struggles in the first half, Mularkey said: “They uptempo-ed us and that’s good for us. We need that. We need to find out about ourselves. We need to do a better job tackling and we are working on our man coverage a little bit. Some guys are getting matched up with some of their guys and they did a great job with their passing game, getting guys to the voids where we were not there.”

The Jaguars ranked sixth in defensive yardage allowed last year and have a goal of being No. 1 this year, but couldn’t stop Flacco, who used the no-huddle offense at times. Flacco completed 27 of 36 passes for 226 yards and two touchdowns.

Backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor, a sixth-round draft pick a year ago from Virginia Tech, took over early in the third quarter and engineered a seven-play, 80-yard drive against the Jaguars backups that was capped by an 8-yard touchdown pass to LaQuan Williams for a 27-3 lead.

Taylor followed that up by putting together a second touchdown drive of 80 yards in 10 plays and he capped it by running five yards for the score with 12:35 left to make it 34-3.

The Jaguars’ first touchdown was provided by defensive back Antonio Dennard, who picked off a Taylor pass and returned it 55 yards for a score.

Taylor then came back with another 80-yard drive in five plays as Bobby Rainey went 48 yards for a touchdown with a pass after Courtney Greene whiffed on the tackle attempt.

That made it 41-10.

Richard Murphy scored the Jaguars’ final touchdown on a 16-yard run with 2:06 left.

The Jaguars had planned to play their starters deep into the third quarter, but Mularkey pulled the defensive starters after the first series of the second half because they were on the field for 37 plays in the first half.

“Defensively, they had a lot of plays so we are substituted those guys early in this [second half of the] game,’’ he said.

The special teams also struggled. Baltimore’s Jacoby Jones had punt returns of 14 and 15 yards, and returned a kickoff 51 yards from deep in the end zone.

One of the few bright spots for the Jaguars was the play of rookie wide receiver Justin Blackmon, who caught three passes in the first half and added a fourth in the third quarter. It was the second game in a row that Blackmon had four catches.

Three Jaguars backups, Aaron Morgan (ankle), tight end Zach Miller (lower leg) and defensive end George Selvie (knee), left the game and didn’t return.

@tealrevival: GS has not had outright busts but I do think he has has failed to pick up impact players. Now Blackmon looks like he will be the exception.

This is going to be a big year to see how good his players really are. If Gabbert has a good year he will stay, if he does not and this team is a sub .500 team, I have to think he will be gone. The jury right now is out on GS.

I also have to agree with those who think a combo of blackmon/MJD might be good. Face it, tell MJD he can't run it and he will pound it home just to spite you. The bigger question is how blackmon will when teams double team him. Recently, the jags have relied on 1 good WR and teams have just double covered them and shut them down. If blackmon can still catch in double coverage, it will be huge. Plus it will open up for the run too.

Stink it looks like the people who evaluate talent were right about blaine. Good short game no long game. Of course jags fans always know differently but get pushed back to school.

Right now, it is becoming more clear the gene did have a voice in shack's picks and gene's own picks are not really any better. Right now shack is looking pretty good in detroit. So the big question to everyone is what made shack so bad here and so good in Detroit? could it be Gene the draft bust machine.